Tomorrow, the United States is expected to submit its offer for how it will address climate change ahead of United Nations talks in Paris this December.

For the first time since the birth of U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, all U.N. member nations are invited to send in their plan for how they will tackle global warming. These plans, known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs, represent a divergence from historically ‘top-down’ negotiations, where the outcome document is the product of a few major powers. Each submission will include targets for reducing emissions; measures the country will take to adapt to climate impacts; and why the country believes their plan is a fair contribution.Alden Meyer, from the Union of Concerned Scientists describes the INDCs as “a bottom-up process, where each country decides for itself what it can do based on its national circumstances and political will.”Governments will meet in Paris later this year to discuss their INDCs and negotiate what many hope will become a legally binding climate treaty. Taken together, the INDCs are required to keep the global average temperature rise below 2ºC, which scientists consider an upper limit.What will the U.S. INDC look like?

Last November, we received a glimpse as to what the U.S.’s INDC will look like when the U.S. and China announced a joint pledge to reduce emissions. In Beijing, President Obama pledged a 26 to 28 percent reduction in economy-wide emissions below 2005 levels by the year 2025. It is unknown how the INDC will fit with the Obama administration’s domestic Climate Action Plan, which enumerates how the government will reduce carbon emissions and improve resilience to natural disasters. While some of the measures are in place, including a national cap on pollution from power plants, others are far from implementation.

An U.N. agreement agreed upon this year would come into force from 2020. The U.S. INDC should aim to align well with its domestic policies and potentially include additional measures to ensure it is a success.

Meyer says that the U.S. government has conducted a lot of internal analysis which looks at the existing Climate Action Plan policies and what it could yield over that time frame. However, the U.S. shouldn’t wait until 2020 to increase its climate action. Moreover, ensuring that the INDC process is transparent and inclusive to civil society and other non-state actors is essential.

What are the obstacles?

Although we have an idea about the likely contents of the U.S. INDC, there are a number of impediments to consider which are mainly political.

Last week, the House and Senate each passed their versions of the Republican budget resolution for 2016. The Republicans are calling for large cuts to federal climate change programs and renewable energy deployment. This includes a Senate amendment that would prohibit a carbon tax. A lack of financing poses a threat to any effective plan U.S. negotiators could hope to bring to Paris.

The lengthy build-up to the 2016 presidential elections is another factor likely to upset domestic environmental ambition. Obama’s emissions reduction target for 2025 makes the assumption there’s going to be no meaningful action by Congress over that time period. This is a fair bet, given the political gridlock in Washington. Yet most of the progress Obama has made on domestic climate action has been implemented through executive action that the next administration could easily overturn. This would render those parts of the U.S. contribution to a 2015 climate treaty null and void.

Democratic hopeful Hilary Clinton has said she would likely keep all Obama’s current actions on climate change where as it is very likely a Republican president would swiftly repeal them. The uncertainty bodes poorly for a strong global accord, given that ambitious participation by the U.S. is key as the largest historic contributor to global carbon emissions. However, the INDCs are a good step towards forcing the U.S. to take a hard look at what progress they can, and should, take. Switzerland, the EU, and Mexico were the first to submit their INDCs. The imminent launch of the U.S.’s INDC is an opportunity for the Obama administration to show the world that the U.S. is committed to ambitious climate action and a strong global agreement in Paris.

Marguerite Suozzo-Golé is a researcher at Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab. The opinions reflected in this article are the sole responsibility of the author.

On Wednesday March 18, the CDL’s Guy Edwards spoke at theAmericas Societyin New York on U.S. – Latin American relations and climate change. This theme and the broader question of whether U.S. influence in Latin America is declining was the subject of the winter edition of theAmericas Quarterlymagazine to which we contributed an article. Here's a recording of the event:

Last week Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab co-organized a conferenceon the state of the U.N. climate negotiations which are set to create a new global agreement this December. The conversation assessed Latin America’s importance and leadership on global and national climate governance with a focus on Latin American countries’ efforts to prepare their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). The INDCs will be a key element of a new agreement and will include information about a country’s efforts to reduce it emissions and adapt to climate impacts, among other issues.

Figure 1. North-South private climate finance according to different sources

By Martin Stadelmann and Timmons Roberts

Today, the U.N. has published a “clarification note” where it explains that the actual number for North-South climate finance may be closer to the lower bound of the $40-175 billionmentionedin its“Biennial Assessment and Overview of Climate Finance Flows”report. That report, released at the U.N. negotiations in Lima, Peru in December, was a landmark in assessing climate finance flows, and a valuable effort to support discussions during this pivotal year for global climate politics. This is an important clarification. According to our own estimates, the actual number for North-South climate finance is clearly closer to $40 than $175 billion. The upper bound of the original U.N. estimate relied on a private climate finance number ($27-123 billion) in our paper “Difficulties in accounting for private finance in international climate policy,” which actually refers to all private finance in the global south that is “mobilized by developed country governments”(e.g. through carbon markets or development banks)—not private finance flowing North-to-South. That is an important difference. Estimates for North-South flows both in our paper and the last two editions of Climate Policy Initiative’s Global Landscape of Climate Finance are much lower than the figures cited by the U.N. report (see Figure 1). Our own 2013 estimate for North-South private climate finance flows was $10-37 billion, comprising foreign direct investment for renewable energy, recycling, and environmental technology manufacturing. If we take the $2-37 billion range for North-South private finance according to existing estimates (see Figure 1) and add the U.N. estimate of $35-50 billion for North-South public finance (see Figure 2), total North-South climate finance is somewhere between $37 billion and $87 billion, clearly closer to the lower bound of the U.N. estimate of $40-175 billion, and certainly less than half of the upper bound.The consequences of confusion around climate finance numbers are illustrated by the articles and blogs around the world that reported on the U.N. committee’s figures. Reutersreported that “Those numbers suggest the world may not be as far off track in meeting the $100 billion goal as previously thought.” India’s Financial Express reported that a Finance Ministry official “refuted the numbers.” The leading Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitungran a front-page article citing the number.Countries will meet in Paris at the end of this year to adopt a global climate deal and again, the progress towards the commitment of industrialized countries to mobilize $100 billion per year by 2020 will be a key part of the negotiations. What happens if industrialized countries communicate, based on North-South numbers released in the U.N. report, that they are already on track to meet their $100 billion commitment, or already past the goal? Efforts and negotiations during this critical year could then be misdirected. The international community might realize only years later not just that the $100 billion commitment may not be met, but also that they are far from the investment required to provide a decent chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. Analysis of the International Energy Agency shows that the additional investment needed for clean energy alone is at least $5 trillion through 2020.Achieving clarity around these issues will not be easy. The Biennial Assessment and Overview of Climate Finance Flows acknowledges the profound methodological challenges in defining and measuring climate finance. Its summary begins by describing the lack of a common approach in this area: “The report encountered challenges in collecting, aggregating and analyzing information from diverse sources. For example, each of these sources uses its own definition of climate finance and its own systems and methodologies for reporting…” The first steps in addressing a problem are identifying it and developing a plan to get on track, so we salute this report as a landmark for raising these crucial issues of accounting for climate finance. Three fundamentals are needed to improve clarity around these issues: (1) a clear definition of what “mobilized climate finance” is; (2) an adequate methodology to allow for monitoring and reporting private finance flows; and (3) an audit of private investments claimed, and their effectiveness in driving low-carbon and climate-resilient development. At stake is whether climate finance can be a building block for an adequate agreement this year in Paris, and the fate of follow-up agreements in the years to come. The U.N. clarification opens the way for realistic planning during this crucial year.

On February 13th and 14th, the world is celebrating Global Divestment Day. On these two days, we are demanding individuals and institutions around the world to lead on climate change by removing their investments from the fossil fuel industry.After only a few years since the fossil fuel divestment movement began, there are now more than 700 campaigns around the world. The movement is growing faster than any previous divestment campaign, posing a significant threat to fossil fuel companies.

Latin America’s evolving relationship with China was a central theme at the recent III Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Costa Rica last month. This followed the first China-CELAC Forum held in Beijing in January which is regarded as a significant upgrade to their partnership.

But while Latin American countries increasingly court the Asian giant as a major trade and investment partner in the region, there is another side to Chinese-Latin American relations.

The event will focus on the state of the U.N. climate negotiations before the deadline this December in Paris to create a new global climate change agreement. Experts from Latin America will assess the region’s importance and leadership on global and national climate governance in the wake of Peru hosting the 2014 U.N. climate conference and the prospects for a new agreement this year. Speakers will also look at Latin American countries’ efforts to prepare their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) which will be a key element of a new climate agreement. The event is being organized by Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the Watson Institute. It is funded by the Fundación Botín. The event will be live streamed: https://mediacapture.brown.edu:8443/ess/echo/presentation/ad7ac252-213f-47fb-8226-5ba875b6bc46

Follow the discussion via Twitter #LACC2020

Speakers:

Walter Vergara, Senior Fellow, World Resources Institute and former head of the Inter-American Development Bank’s climate change unit

Timmons Roberts, Ittleson Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies and co-director of the Climate and Development Lab, Institute at Brown for the Environment and Society and Watson Faculty Fellow

Guy Edwards, Research Fellow and co-director of the Climate and Development Lab, Institute at Brown for the Environment and Society

When it comes to climate change, Latin American citizens and their leaders get the big picture. According to surveys, the region’s citizens are very worried about global warming, and its leaders frequently cite climate change as a major national security threat at United Nations conferences.

However, the consensus appears to largely end there. National positions and strategies on how to confront climate change diverge markedly in a region known for paying lip service to solidarity and harmony. The lack of a unified voice is underscored by the inconsistencies between the promises made and actual actions taken by Latin American governments to ameliorate the effects of global warming.

Authors

The pieces featured in the blog are authored by CDL members and a diverse group of partners from around the world. The opinions expressed in these articles are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not reflect those of Brown University.